Mastering story openers that hook the reader and build up to our story is one of the most essential skills for a writer. If we don’t give our readers a compelling reason to invest their time in our story early on, it won’t matter how solid the middle is or …
This exercise is based on a personal recommendation from Rowena Harding-Smith to R. Jean Bell (aka bex). Bex has been having trouble finishing stories lately, unless they are microfiction. She gets ideas and starts but stalls out and can’t seem to complete them. So the goal of this exercise is …
For this exercise, we’re going in a very different direction. It’s good to mix up what you work on to keep yourself from losing too many other skills while focusing on a particular area. Also if you vary, you’re less likely to get frustrated and tired of things and want …
The Exercise For this next assignment, we want to stay with the essential territory of shows, but look at how showing integrates with the point of view of our narrating character. Choose a setting or object and show it from the perspective of three characters so that it portrays …
If we want to grow as writers, we need to practice our craft, push our boundaries, and hone our abilities to control the mechanics of the written word. Mastering the rules is essential before you start breaking them. How else can we know what rule to break and when …
